Deluge | Book 1 | The Drowned

by Partner, Kevin

  “Hey,” she said as she reached the cockpit. “Go get some shut-eye.”

  He shook his head wearily.

  Ellie stroked his shoulder. “Come on. You haven’t slept properly in three days. You’re no use to me if you don’t spot a cow in the water.”

  For a moment, his eyes widened, and she thought he was going to snap at her, but he obviously couldn’t summon the energy and, realizing this, he seemed to shrink and turned to go.

  “Send Pat up, will you? He can take a turn on the bow while I steer for a while.”

  “Okay. But you come wake me up in a few hours. You haven’t slept much either.”

  She nodded and watched him wearily make his way below.

  Minutes later, the woebegone figure of Patrick Reid emerged. He’d given up coaxing his thinning hair into covering his balding crown and, with his two-day beard growth, he looked more hobo than hero.

  But he had two mugs of coffee in his hands as he carefully made his way up from the saloon, and he handed one to her. Looks could be deceiving.

  “So, have we all woken up from this shared nightmare yet?”

  Ellie breathed in the rich aroma of her favorite brand and felt her tired neurons firing in anticipation of the caffeine hit. “We’re over Florida now. Key West.”

  “It’s down there?” He gestured to the bottom of the boat.

  “Yeah, a long way down. Hundreds of feet, I reckon.”

  He ran his hands down his puffy face. “My God, how is it possible? Is the whole country under water? The whole world?”

  “I dunno. My rational brain tells me it can’t be. There’s plenty of high ground to the west, but I honestly can’t get my mind around what’s happened.”

  “Look out!” he snapped, pointing ahead.

  With a crunch, the boat shook and Ellie staggered sideways into Patrick, who’d grabbed a rail.

  “What the hell?”

  Something was scraping along the port bow, half tipping the boat as it went. Ellie slid down the ladder to the main deck and looked over the side of the bow.

  “I didn’t see nothing!” Jodi said, running up to join her.

  It was an ambulance, just beneath the surface, bobbing up and down in response to random currents, passing under the bow and scraping it each time it came up.

  “Oh, my God,” Ellie gasped. There, still strapped inside the water-filled cab, a body moved slowly, uniformed arms moving like some ghostly orchestra conductor, pale face shrouded in a swirling curtain of long dark hair.

  Patrick handed her a boat hook. “Come on, we have to push it away.”

  He took another hook and began pushing down on the ambulance. Ellie kneeled beside him, and Jodi pushed from the other side. Finally, the vehicle began moving at an angle to the bow, and the danger passed. But just as it began to drift away, Ellie saw the back doors swing open, and a shape floated out. A small shape wrapped in a shawl.

  Jodi cried out and threw herself at Patrick. Ellie remained on her knees, boat hook in the water, watching the ambulance float away, the small object following it as if trying to catch up. She listened to Jodi as she bawled her grief into Patrick’s chest and then realized she was also sobbing, her tears mixing with the salt of the ocean water until, finally, she felt the warmth of arms wrapping themselves around her and she allowed herself to be guided up and taken below.

  She woke to see Tom’s naked back as he sat on the end of her bed, head down.

  “Tom?”

  He turned to look at her, laying the chart he’d been examining on the bed at her feet. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “How did I get here?” she asked. “How long have I been asleep? Hold on, we didn’t …we didn’t?”

  He smiled. “One question at a time. No, we didn’t. You collapsed on the ladder, so I carried you down here. How long? Eight hours.”

  “But …but you were supposed to get some sleep yourself.”

  “I did.”

  “You left Patrick in charge of the boat?”

  “No.”

  She sat up straight, immediately wide awake. “You left Jodi in charge?”

  His smile widened. “No. I turned the engine off, checked there was no damage to the bow and let us drift so we could all sleep.”

  “You did what?”

  “Don’t panic. It worked out, didn’t it? We’re still here, and everyone’s had a little sleep.”

  “But we could have …”

  “What, exactly? Run aground? I don’t think so. And when we’re drifting, then anything we collide with is going the same way, so little chance of damage.”

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed. He hadn’t undressed her, then. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “That was a hell of a risk, and not your call to make.”

  He made a dismissive gesture and got up, taking the chart with him. “Maybe it was a risk in normal times. But now? Everyone was exhausted, Ellie. We all needed to sleep. Now we can sail on. Go back to Clearwater.”

  “What do you think we’ll find there?”

  He glanced back at her as he reached the cabin door, all traces of a smile gone. “Nothing but water. But we have to be sure.”

  “And then where?”

  But he was gone. And he was right. His recklessness had left her feeling sharper and more capable than she had been since they’d begun the journey back. What were they to do once they confirmed that Clearwater, Tampa and the rest of Florida, was under the waves?

  She had no idea, but she suspected she knew who did. It was no coincidence that she’d been commissioned to take Jodi out into deep water on the day the flood happened. She doubted that the girl herself knew much, but her guardian must have some clue. Patrick Reid was the key, whether he knew it or not.

  The wind had picked up by the time she’d showered and had her first change of clothes in three days. She checked in on Lewis and his dog Hector, but they were sound asleep in the bunks beside the galley. The kid had been exhausted by his time in the water. She dreaded to think what would have happened if they’d come across him an hour or two later. But he was among the lucky few. He would survive, for now.

  She found Patrick in the saloon, sitting on the banquette with his face out of an open window. Where his skin wasn’t deathly pale, it was tinged green. Good, that gave her an advantage.

  “Patrick,” Ellie said, sitting down beside him and doing her best to ignore the swaying of the boat. She had good sea legs in general (she had good legs, period) but even she sometimes felt dizzy if the horizon was bouncing around too much. “Did you sleep well?”

  He looked lazily back at her. “What? Yeah. At least until the boat started rocking. I haven’t been out in a sea like this since I was a boy on the Isle of Wight ferry.”

  “Seriously? It’s a little choppy, sure, but not exactly a tempest.”

  He grunted and looked back out of the window.

  “So, we’re heading for Clearwater. What d’you think we’ll find there?” Ellie said.

  “Clear water, I guess.”

  She slammed the banquette’s seat cushion. “Seriously? Making a joke?”

  “Sorry. Gallows humor, I suppose. But true enough. It would only take the sea level to rise a few meters to drown the whole of Florida, and I reckon it’s gone up a lot more than that.” A gust of wind caught the boat and pitched him back toward Ellie and then half out of the window again. When he’d righted himself, he pulled a pill bottle out of his pocket and tipped one tablet into his shaking palm.

  “How many of those have you had?”

  He shrugged. “Clearly not enough.”

  “Look, Patrick, what do you know about all this?” She gestured at the horizon.

  He looked at her out of bloodshot eyes. “Why would I know anything?”

  “Oh, come off it. You’re sent to accompany Jodi into the middle of the ocean exactly when this …whatever this is happens. You expect me to believe it’s a coincidence?”

  Reid wiped his forehead. He rea
lly did look ghastly, but Ellie wasn’t about to let him off the hook; she simply waited for him to speak.

  “I …I don’t know. I was asked by a friend to look after his daughter. I’ve known Jodi for years. It didn’t seem all that strange. Joel’s in Morocco filming.”

  “But you didn’t ask him why?”

  Reid shook his head. “You’ve got to understand. When you’re an actor you get used to being sent places. You have to learn to take it in your stride, and a cruise didn’t sound like too hard a job to me. And …and Joel paid me. Oh, don’t look like that. We’ve all got to earn a living.”

  “And how is that turning out for you?”

  “I guess I’m glad to be here rather than in my condo outside Miami. Though it’s a toss-up at the moment, to be frank. Look, if you want answers then you’d be better off talking to Jodi.”

  “What?”

  He gave a weak smile. “She’s a lot smarter than you might think. Takes after her uncle.”

  “Who?”

  “Ed Baxter. Jodi calls him Uncle Buzz. Joel’s brother. The family genius. He got the brains, Joel got the looks, Joel made lots of money. Ed’s a scientist. Come to think of it, Joel said it was Ed’s idea for Jodi to go on this cruise…”

  Ellie cursed under her breath and went to find Jodi. Tom was back in the cockpit fixing their position—GPS was still working, fortunately, so he was setting a course for Clearwater.

  She found the girl sitting astride the starboard bow, just as she had been the previous day. “Not seeing so much in the water,” Jodi said, turning as she heard Ellie approach.

  “I guess a lot of it has sunk,” Ellie said, realizing as she did so that she was talking about human beings as well as all the other debris in the ocean.

  Ellie sat on the trampoline, looking up at Jodi. She was a pretty one, that was for sure. Her natural beauty was emerging now that she wasn’t bothering with the heavy makeup so typical of girls her age. What was she? Eighteen? Nineteen? At her age, Ellie had traveled across the country, met the “love of her life” and switched from studying business to marine biology because that’s what he was doing. Then he’d gone and gotten himself shot in a drive-by…

  She suppressed the memory. The last thing she needed now was to wallow.

  “Tell me about your uncle,” she said. “Did he send you out here to keep you safe?”

  “Been wondering that myself. Yeah, guess so. Dad didn’t give me much choice and Uncle Buzz is the only person he listens to. Sometimes, anyway.”

  “Why would Buzz know anything?”

  “He’s a scientist. Works in genetics. Crazy smart. But I don’t have no beta on what he’s got to do with all this.”

  A shadow fell over Ellie and the trampoline bounced a little as Tom settled in beside her. “Course is plotted, but there’s a problem.”

  “Of course there is,” Ellie sighed. “Lay it on me, Eeyore.”

  He picked at the netting with one hand as he dropped the chart down with the other. “I reckon three hundred miles to Clearwater. That’s gonna take half our remaining fuel.”

  “So?”

  “So, where do we go then? Where will we be able to get more?”

  Ellie’d never, in all the time she’d had the boat, needed to worry about fuel. She shook her head. “Truth is, Tom, I’ve only been thinking about getting back to Clearwater, I haven’t given a single thought to where we’ll go then. I guess I was hoping it might still be there, though I know it won’t be.”

  “Well, you’re the captain,” Tom said. He stared out over the ocean and Ellie knew what he was thinking.

  She took his hand as the wind eased and the boat settled, absentmindedly sweeping the salt caught in the hairs of his forearm. “I’m sorry about Julio, I truly am.”

  “I know you liked him. He loved you like a daughter.”

  She felt the tears swelling in her eyes again and fought to keep her mind from her own daughter who was thousands of miles away. Unless she was under the water too. She drew in a deep breath and brought her voice under control. “We’ll go and pay our respects to your dad,” she said to Tom. “And then we’ll decide where we go from there. As for me, I’ve got to go after my daughter. I’ve got to know …”

  They sat in the silence of their own thoughts: Ellie and Tom huddled together on the trampoline, and Jodi astride the bow.

  Beep-beep-beep.

  “What the hell’s that?” Ellie said, looking up just in time to see something flying into the air, Jodi desperately trying to grasp at it. Tom put his arm out and caught the smartphone and handed it to Jodi.

  “Nearly dropped it. Oh my God, it’s a text!”

  Ellie got up as quickly as the springy trampoline would allow. “Who is it from? What does it say?”

  She held her breath, and it took every ounce of self-control not to grab the device out of Jodi’s hand.

  “I know where we’ll go after we’ve gotten back to Clearwater,” Jodi said, turning to look at them and holding out the smartphone. “It’s Uncle Buzz. We got to go to him.”

  Chapter 10

  The Mist

  Buzz emerged from the animal shed and took in a deep breath of fresh air. Hank followed him out, wiping the straw off his jeans and pushing the metal door closed with a clank.

  “C’mon, time for a break,” Buzz said, leading Hank toward the farmhouse. Now they were outside, he felt the chill of the unseasonably cold morning on his arms, but he’d happily take that over the stench of cattle and pigs.

  Hank had done his best to make himself useful since Buzz had let him inside the compound two days before. He’d had a varied past that included working as a farm hand to fund his way through college in the 1970s, and Buzz was glad of his help and his company.

  The same couldn’t be said of Max, the injured young man Hank had brought to Buzz’s gate. Buzz had found the bullet lodged in the boy’s pelvis, having entered from his abdomen. The angle had been so shallow that he could only imagine Max had been diving forward when he’d been shot. Maybe diving for cover, or perhaps reaching to attack. Whatever the story, he’d been lucky. The bullet had punched through the skin and fat of his belly and then lodged in the bone where Buzz could remove it.

  Max had come around the next morning—yesterday morning—but he’d barely said a word since then. When Buzz had gotten up for breakfast today, he’d found Max sitting on the porch, the injured leg sticking out. He’d accepted a plate of scrambled eggs with no more acknowledgment than a quick glance, as if to check that they were, indeed, for him. Buzz found a throw in the living room and wrapped it around him, then left the boy to stare into the mist.

  “He’s still there, then,” Hank said, gesturing at the unmoving figure on the porch, then looking out over the grass. “Boy, this mist gives me the creeps.”

  Buzz nodded. Ever since the day after the water came in, this weird sea fog had sat at the head of the valley and along its upper slopes. It felt as though they were completely cut off from the world around them, almost as if they’d been transported to another planet. He half expected to see giant alien eyes looking down at him from above.

  Hank kneeled beside Max and looked up at him. “How are you doin’, Max?”

  The boy seemed surprised to find him there. “Max.”

  “Yeah. That’s your name, ain’t it?”

  He was rewarded with a nod before Max raised his head and looked out at the fog again.

  “You want something to eat or drink?”

  “Mountain Dew, Pitch Black.”

  “What?”

  “You arksed me what I want to drink. Mountain Dew, Pitch Black.”

  Hank glanced up at Buzz. “Don’t suppose you got none of that?”

  “I’ll just check the menu,” he said, looking down an invisible sheet of paper in his hand. “No, we don’t have that particular brand. Would sir like to choose an alternative?”

  Max looked in Buzz’s general direction without making eye contact. “I drink Mountain Dew,
Pitch Black.”

  “Listen, buster, you drank water yesterday.”

  “I was ill.”

  “And you’ll become even more sick if you don’t drink something. We’ve got powdered lemonade, will that do?”

  “Is it Mountain Dew, Pitch Black?”

  Buzz turned on his heels and, without another word, headed for the kitchen. A few minutes later, as he was filling two cups with the thick coffee brew he preferred, Hank joined him.

  “There’s somethin’ not right about that kid,” Hank said. “Can’t get no sense out of him.”

  Buzz stirred in some sugar and handed a cup to Hank. “It’s okay. He’s on the spectrum.”

  “Ah. Heard about that. So, what do we do about it?”

  “Not much. I’ve spent my life working with scientists and I’ve met plenty of people like Max. We’ll have to be patient.”

  “Doesn’t seem to me like he’s much of a threat, anyway.”

  Buzz nodded. “For now, all we’ve got to do is work out a way to get him to drink. He took the eggs from me without a problem, so he’ll eat. But if he doesn’t find something he likes to drink …”

  “Yeah. I’ll try talkin’ to him. He seems to open up with me.”

  “Well, one way or another, he has to—”

  The device at Buzz’s hip squealed until he raised it and tapped the screen. “Dammit! People approaching the gate. Come on!”

  He ran upstairs into the monitoring room and flicked on the screens. So much for his plan to find somewhere he didn’t have to share with strangers. There they were, shadowy figures looming out of the mist. It was like watching a fifties B movie but, unfortunately, he couldn’t make them go away by simply switching off the monitor.

  “How many, do you reckon?” Hank said, squinting at the monitors.

  “Can’t say. I can see five or six, but there could be any number hiding in the fog.”

  “Some of ’em’s kids.”

  Hank was right. At least half of the indistinct shapes were too small to be adults.

  “What are you gonna do? You ain’t gonna leave them out there, are you?”

  Buzz groaned. He was a grade-one control freak and he could feel his mind beginning to race. He would have to get a grip quickly. This locomotive had to be kept in its tracks. He could generally cope if he allowed his mind to focus along a narrow path: if not, he was likely to be more loco than locomotive.